COAL- Clean Coal Technologies (CCT)

Clean coal technologies are several generations of technological advances that have led to more efficient combustion of coal with reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide….The clean coal technology program has resulted in more than 20 new, lower cost, more efficient and environmentally compatible technologies for electric utilities, steel mills, cement plants and other industries. Read more>>

CLEANING UP COALCoal is our most abundant fossil fuel. The United States has more coal than the rest of the world has oil. There is still enough coal underground in this country to provide energy for the next 200 to 300 years.

The Clean Coal Technology ProgramThe Clean Coal Technology Program began in 1985 when the United States and Canada decided that something had to be done about the “acid rain” that was believed to be damaging rivers, lakes, forests, and buildings in both countries. Since many of the pollutants…Read more>>fe.doe.govHow do you make coal cleaner?How do scrubbers work?

Knocking the NOx Out of Coal- fe.doe.govNitrogen is the most common part of the air we breathe. In fact, about 80% of the air is nitrogen. Normally, nitrogen atoms float around joined to each other like chemical couples. But when air is heated…Read more>>

A “Bed” for Burning Coal?- fe.doe.govIt was a wet, chilly day in Washington DC in 1979 when a few scientists and engineers joined with government and college officials on the campus of Georgetown University to celebrate the completion of one of the world’s most advanced coal combustors.

It was a small coal burner by today’s standards, but large enough to provide heat and steam for much of the university campus. But the new boiler built beside the campus tennis courts was unlike most other boilers in the world….Read more>>

The Cleanest Coal Technology – a Real Gas!- fe.doe.govDon’t think of coal as a solid black rock. Think of it as a mass of atoms. Most of the atoms are carbon. A few are hydrogen. And there are some others, like sulfur and nitrogen, mixed in. Chemists can take this mass of atoms, break it apart, and make new substances – like gas!…Read more>>

You can burn it and uses the hot combustion gases to spin a gas turbine to generate electricity. The exhaust gases coming out of the gas turbine are hot enough to boil water to make steam that can spin another type of turbine to generate even more electricity. But why go to all the trouble to turn the coal into gas if all you are going to do is burn it?A major reason is that the impurities in coal…

Now, what do you do with the gas?- fe.doe.govYou can burn it and uses the hot combustion gases to spin a gas turbine to generate electricity. The exhaust gases coming out of the gas turbine are hot enough to boil water to make steam that can spin another type of turbine to generate even more electricity. But why go to all the trouble to turn the coal into gas if all you are going to do is burn it?A major reason is that the impurities in coal…Read more>>

DOE’s clean coal R&D is focused on developing and demonstrating advanced power generation and carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies for existing facilities and new fossil-fueled power plants by increasing overall system efficiencies and reducing capital costs. In the near-term, advanced technologies that…Read the entire article>>energy.gov

Environmentalists say that clean coal is a myth. Of course it is: Just look at West Virginia, where whole Appalachian peaks have been knocked into valleys to get at the coal underneath and streams run orange with acidic water. Or look at downtown Beijing, where the air these days is often thicker than in an airport smoking lounge. Air pollution in China, much of it from burning coal, is blamed for more than a million premature deaths a year. That’s on top of the thousands who die in mining accidents, in China and elsewhere.

These problems aren’t new. In the late 17th century,…

…China, meanwhile, has begun regional experiments with a more market-friendly approach—one that was pioneered in the U.S. In the 1990s the EPA used the Clean Air Act to impose a cap on total emissions of sulfur dioxide from power plants, allocating tradable pollution permits to individual polluters. At the time, the power industry predicted disastrous economic consequences. Instead the scheme produced innovative, progressively cheaper technologies and significantly cleaner air. Rubin says that carbon-capture systems are at much the same stage that sulfur dioxide systems were in the 1980s. Once emissions limits create a market for them, their cost too could fall dramatically.